There's No Water, but At Least We Have Internet

"It's an interesting and eye opening experience to find seams that cut across all of these different industries.

Over the years of getting to know Crunch, this isn't the first time she's found herself in a very obscure and remote part of the world to live in. She lived on an island in Panama for five months and was fed three meals a day. In exchange for this lifestyle, she taught the resort staff how to speak English so that they could better serve their foreign guests. There were only 10 people who worked and lived on the island, so I guess from that perspective she's doing slightly better socially in Thailand. When I first met her, she was living in Costa Rica, where I am also living. Even more strangely, she was originally from Singapore, just like me.

“If there's no men, where do the children come from? Space?” I said.

“Yes. They fall from the sky every morning and are sucked back into the abyss at 4pm.”

We instantly clicked because it's not everyday you find a Singaporean living in Costa Rica who eats the same amount of food you do. We both have reputations of eating the same as, if not more than, bodybuilders - and we're both half the size. When a work colleague of hers commented on the vast amount of food we were consuming during a special Indian holiday called Diwali, we both replied without a second thought, “It's a Singaporean thing.”

At the time of this writing, Crunch is located in a small Thai village teaching English to young children and working with Podfly in the evenings. When I spoke to her on Skype, I asked her how village life was and she replied candidly with, “My village is a village. We are dealing with very village-like problems, like, not having running water.” According to her, her village only has a population of 12 or so people (okay, more like 200-500, but still). Supposedly, and somewhat sarcastically, there are also no men in this village.

A Life Full of Travel

Crunch has been traveling the world since 2013 and doesn't plan to stop. She started her adventure in South America and stayed there for slightly over a year. She then lived on a boat for six months and visited roughly 10 Caribbean islands during that trip. “We almost died anyway trying to get to the Bahamas.” She says nonchalantly about her experience on the boat, “So, it was a good thing we didn't set out to Cuba. We would have just died along the way.” I later found out her co-captain had no sailing experience whatsoever, “God, I'm so surprised you didn't die.” I told her.

“I'm surprised we didn't die either. There were so many times we could have, but we somehow survived and nothing terribly awful happened, I think.” She said. Through, she's glad she did it. She says that Turks and Caicos was the most beautiful place she's ever been to. She saw nothing but clear waters and even swam with the dolphins.

After living on the boat, she got a job in Costa Rica teaching English for eight months, which is where I met her; she then went to an island in Panama. Once she got tired of island life, she traveled to India and lived there for three months. Her heritage is South Indian and she wanted to get a better understanding of her roots.

“I’m surprised we didn’t die either. There were so many times we could have, but we somehow survived and nothing terribly awful happened, I think.”

However, despite speaking the language, she quickly grew frustrated with the cultural differences. She believes foreigners who don't speak the language would have an easier time in India than she did. “I had a very strange experience in India because I look Indian and I speak one of the many languages that they speak, but I'm obviously not Indian. So, they know I'm a foreigner, but obviously some weird privileged foreigner.” She goes on to say, “They treated me like they would the other locals, but I'm just as clueless as all the other white folk who have no idea what they're doing either.” This made it very difficult trying to navigate throughout the country, so she decided it was time to move on.

And just like that, she left and settled in Thailand, which is where she's been for the last six months. However, Crunch doesn't plan on staying in Thailand for much longer. After the school year is up, she plans to stay in Cambodia for two weeks before returning home for a short stint in Singapore. From there, she has very tentative plans to head back to Latin America, where she already speaks Spanish.

How She Made It Work

Crunch worked as a teacher for a year and a half in Singapore and saved enough money to travel. Since Latin America is a lot cheaper compared to the fast-paced life of Singapore, her money was able to stretch a long way. When she was slowly running low on savings, she knew she wasn't ready to go back home just yet.

So, she got her TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) certificate while in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was something to do while waiting for the weather to be clear for sailing. From there, she looked for jobs online and found a place hiring in Costa Rica. Since she started teaching, it's been fairly easy to get other teaching jobs all over the world. This is the perfect combo for Crunch as she's able to travel the world while still being paid.

Being a Copywriter for Podfly

Regardless of what the industry is, they all have the same concerns and the same kind of solutions for approaching these problems.

I asked Crunch what she thought about the podcasting industry since she's been at Podfly and this is what she had to say:

“I like what I do. I like podcasting in general just because I get to listen to such a variety of topics. I write show notes for different shows varying from mortgages to sales to finance or entrepreneurship. These are all very diverse topics and what's interesting for me is that I find after a while, after listening to all of these different perspectives, it gives me an idea that they're not very different. In a sense, it all comes down to human connections and relationship management.”

“It's an interesting and eye opening experience to find seams that cut across all of these different industries. Regardless of what the industry is, they all have the same concerns and the same kind of solutions for approaching these problems. I wouldn't have expected people in sales to be worried about the same kind of things that people in finance are worried about. To me, it's quite interesting.”

What Our Amazing Clients Have to Say About Crunch:

“Working with Crunch and Podfly has been a really wonderful experience. I can now rest assured knowing that my podcast will be going out on time and that the copy fully represents my brand and what I stand for.”